Burton Ale remained a popular style in London, despite the restrictions of the war. Whitbread continued to brew in on a large scale. This particular batch was 723 barrels.All things considered, XXXX was holding up pretty well. The gravity remained unchanged at 1043º. Not super strong, but still with considerably more punch than most of the beer being brewed in 1944.
The big change in the recipe is the replacement of flaked oats by flaked barley. The whole oats thing was just a one-year aberration forced on brewers. I’m sure that they were far happier to use flaked barley. Which remained the most used adjunct through to the end of the war and a few years beyond, until supplies of maize once more became available. Whitbread dropped flaked barley towards the end of 1946 and their beers returned to being adjunct-free.
Other than that, the proportions of the ingredients have changed a little, with a bit more pale malt and little less adjunct.
The hops were all English and mostly pretty fresh: Whitbread Mid-Kent from the 1942 harvest, Mid-Kent from 1943 and East Kent from 1943.
| 1944 Whitbread XXXX | ||
| pale malt | 7.50 lb | 77.28% |
| chocolate malt | 0.33 lb | 3.40% |
| flaked barley | 1.00 lb | 10.30% |
| No. 3 invert sugar | 0.75 lb | 7.73% |
| caramel 1000 SRM | 0.125 lb | 1.29% |
| Fuggles 60 mins | 1.25 oz | |
| Goldings 30 mins | 1.00 oz | |
| Goldings dry hops | 0.50 oz | |
| OG | 1043 | |
| FG | 1011 | |
| ABV | 4.23 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 74.42% | |
| IBU | 26 | |
| SRM | 22 | |
| Mash at | 151º F | |
| After underlet | 154º F | |
| Sparge at | 168º F | |
| Boil time | 60 minutes | |
| pitching temp | 62º F | |
| Yeast | Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale | |
Hi Ron ;
ReplyDeleteInteresting data , Up in Lancashire at the Crown Brewery ;
Magee Marshall`s IPA was , at 1.047.5 (30/09/1939), with Ipswich and Flaked Barley as Adjuncts
Then , by January 1943 , the gravity had dropped to 1.043 and the same adjuncts which were a feature of the grist into 1946, though the gravity had risen a whopping 1/2 degree by May 1944
Interestingly , the only entry in the Cost Price brewing book for the Strong Ale for WW 2 has NO Adjuncts ; Just Malt & Sugars @ 1.064.5 ( January 1941 )
Cheers ,
Edd